I’ve always thought that major keys were neglected in rock music and that minor and blues scales are vastly overused in guitar solos. So I’m trying to find all the guitar solos (and songs in general) played in a major key.
Here are two. (Link goes straight to solo.)
Allman Bros. - Blue Sky
Led Zeppelin - Fool in the Rain
Others?
Off the top of my head: Nowhere Man
Jimi Hendrix, “May This Be Love”
Pretty much any rock song with a country-sounding guitar solo is going to be major key. So Allman Brothers are going to be a good choice. See “Ramblin Man” and “Jessica” for popular major pentatonic solos (with the occasional coloring of blue notes, but still major in feeling.) or “Sweet Home Alabama.” “Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam, etc. “More than A Feelin” by Boston (this one has a full major sound, rather than being mostly pentatonic.) There’s a zillion of them out there.
ETA: Actually, “More Than a Feeling” is mixolydian, which is a type of scale with a major third, but not what is normally thought of as THE major scale. The difference is the mixolydian mode has a dominant seventh (so, a Bb, for example, in the key of C), instead of the major seventh (the B, in the key of C.) You’ll find plenty of rock solos in mixolydian.
Thanks for this – as far as I could think into rock, I got just as far as country. I haven’t transcribed a lot of country guitar solos, but certainly the pianos are mostly major things with the occasional little gospel thing just for spice. Certainly not in Western Swing – kings of the pentatonic scales, them were!
I don’t understand - I’m sure because of ignorance - why/how is a blues key not a major key? Is it because the 7th is flattened? I always thought flattening the 7th was just an affectation - not really a different key.
Aren’t all the 1-4-5 rock n’ roll songs a major key?
As far as the Allman Brothers go you’ve already named most of the likely candidates. They have a lot more minor-key blues songs than major key country inflected songs.
Most rock songs tend to be in major keys (harmony-wise), but melody lines and guitar solos will play around with the third alot, hitting a minor third, major third, or in between, even. So if the OP is just looking for rock songs in major keys, that’s gotta be 80%+ of them. It’s mostly the melody lines and solos that play with the tension of the third (and the flatted fifth and dominant seventh.)
As for what I said quoted in the post above, I should be clearer and say that any country-sounding guitar solo will have the guitar solo using the major pentatonic scale (usually adorned with other notes.)
Was typing up my above answer and saw this on posting. Yes, most rock songs are major keys. And there is a difference between traditional blues (which has a major key backbone, or is ambiguous by omitting the third in the accompaniment) and minor blues (which is based on minor chords in the harmony.)
I’m not an expert on the Allman Brothers, but major pentatonic seems to be all over the place with them, or at least with their radio friendly songs. That band is pretty closely associated with the major pentatonic scale. See here.
“Melissa,” “Blue Sky” are a couple others I know. But they almost never do staight major pentatonic. There’s a lot of bluesy coloring to their pentatonic runs.
]
All right, I happen to have an opinion on this one (rare, but it happens!). In major-minor harmonic theory, a dominant 7 (call it a m7) can never form the basis of a tonality, because it always leads somewhere because of the whole tritone thing. Dig?
If you slap a m7 to a maj triad – what do you get? You get a blues tonality – totally different than a major tonality. The flat third and sharp eleven are really, IMO, just tensions just designed and made-to-ready to be resolved.
I’m a good musician, but there are lots of others with more experience – just offering my $0.02
To expand: What determines major and minor tonality is the third. Major third = major tonality, minor third = minor tonality. Somebody can correct me if I’m wrong, but this is what I’ve always been taught, and when I hear chords, it’s the third that signals to me if it’s major or minor.
The so-called “blues scale” is a minor pentatonic scale: 1, b3, 4, 5 b7, with the addition of the #5/b4. Now, this is all a simplification, as the blues sound relies a lot not on those notes, but on bends and ambiguity between the notes. That third may be major, it may be minor, it may be somewhere in between. The bog-standard blues scale, though, contains a minor third, so it’s considered to have minor tonality, by Western theory conventions. However, this minor tonality in the melody often plays against the major tonality in the harmony, which is part of what gives blues its feel.
I’m saying most of the rest of the band’s catalogue doesn’t sound like that- more of it is minor key stuff (Whipping Post, Dreams, Stormy Monday, Elizabeth Reed), usually with a clearer blues bent. Most of the bigger hits definitely have that country tinge.
What about “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister?
The blues scale is the minor pentatonic scale with a b5 added: 1 - b3 - 4 - b5 - 5 - b7
cough I meant #4/b5 where I wrote “#5/b4” (which are obviously not enharmonic.) Little bit of dislexia going around.
The designation “m7” should not be used to refer to a note in the chord. m7 refers to two things: 1) an interval consisting of ten semitones and 2) a minor 7 chord, spelled 1 - b3 - 5 - b7.
A dominant 7 chord is spelled 1 - b3 - 5 - b7. Introducing the designation m7 confuses what the chord is. C7 (a dominant C chord) is NOT the same thing as a Cm7 (C minor 7), for example.
Given your username, I expected more from you! 
A “7” can be either major or minor, or even diminished, I guess, AFAIK, but does not imply the quality of the third.
But here’s what I am sure of – a dom7 chord not only plays the role of resolving in an authentic cadence (even round-about by way of a secondary dominant) – there must be the tritone between the major third and the minor 7th – that’s the way it’s unstable and needs to resolve.
Also the reason it can’t, according to regular functional harmony, form the basis of a proper tonality (which is why blues is so odd and yet pleasing – it sets new rules). A V in “blues” tonality is just another dominant chord. It makes more sense in a minor key, which is where you get the harmonic minor scale – to give the V7 a leading tone to get back to the i.
Obviously, you can have a “tonality” sort of on a #9, 7 chord – think “Lonely Avenue,” by Doc Pomus, but the sharp nine exists together with the plain, major third. That’s why it’s not called a flat third, but a raised nine. Richard Tee, the great pianist, did that a lot, especially in his gospel-flavored originals, and loads of bebop pianists used both the b9 and the #9 on a true V7 chord as tensions to get back to the I in major back in the 1940s.
Journey - Don’t Stop Believin’
Ah, now it’s my turn to point out a typo or brain fart. A dominant 7 chord is spelled 1 - 3 - 5 -b7.